This is basically a post analyzing my current status on my project and evaluating how successfully I accomplished my goals. I think it is best to start out listing my original goals and highlight the status of each feature. Hopefully by categorizing the goals also I can get a better idea of what I did well, and what still is lacking.
X = Completed (No major additions need)
x = Mostly Complete (Functional, but may need small tweaks/additions)
/ = In Progress (Started, but not really functional for practical use)
= Not Started
- = Originally Planned but Postponed
* = Future feature never planed in timeline
User Interface
[x] Add Food Page (still needs option for number of servings)
[X] Page Displaying Day's Intake of Food
[X] Page Displaying Total Nutrition For Day
[*] Nutrition Facts Page
[*] Preview Page (preview effect of food on day's nutrition)
[-] Barcode Scanning
[*] Voice Input
Database Management
[X] Copy Over Consumed Information to Local DB
[x] Add meals to local DB (need to set dates and servings)
[-] Scrape in Food Product Information
[*] Setup on Server for Main DB
Usability Features
[/] Food Lookup
[ ] Food Search Personalization (Give your common meals higher priority in search)
[ ] Filter preferred nutrients (Only visualized specified nutrients)
[-] UPC Lookup
Analysis Features
[/] Nutrition Visualization (have the nutrition calculated, but still need improvements in presentation order)
[ ] Personalized Goals
In retrospect, I think that I am in decent shape. I did underestimate how much time it would take to get the database and the basic framework up and running. This was definitely the biggest bottleneck during the early stages of development. In order to get caught up, I had to cut out UPC Lookup and Database scraping. My main reasoning for cutting them out was because they would have required even more work hacking two different databases to combine together. I did not give enough time for either of these, and so I think that it was the right decision to postpone them. Otherwise, I may have had a database with a wealth of data, but no functionality to show for it.
After my Alpha Review, the general consensus was that I didn't have enough to show for my work. I then decided that I needed to refocus on some immediate usable features. I refocused my efforts on hammering out the UI, and getting actual data interaction. I think that this was a very beneficial decision. I now have something I can actually interact with and test that shows concrete results. Even though some of the implementation is not finished, I have a much better idea of what works, and what parts of my initial assumptions were correct and which were wrong.
There were times during development that I think I lost focus of what I wanted to do. I set out with the mind set that this would be a project that I would continue even after the semester ends (which I still) do. However, I think that clouded my thoughts when it came to making decisions on what need to be done, because I got caught up on my long term goals, and didn't spend enough time implementing the short term goals. In terms of my project's full life time, the distribution of my efforts was probably more reasonable. However, my early approach was not the best for getting a working prototype up in just one semester.
I am pretty confident with my current direction now, and I think I have a good focus for the remaining three weeks. I will go into more detail about the specific features that I have chosen in my next post.
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